How this social house is helping to revive Five Points South

In mid-summer, word started to spread. There were rumors about a new bar, or was it a restaurant? Something about duckpin bowling and mega Pac-Man. By August, everyone knew. The Woolworth, Birmingham’s first full-service social house, was coming to Five Points South. Finally, after a long summer of anticipation, The Woolworth (named for the former five-and-dime general store that once stood in its place) opened its doors to the city. Except this reincarnation is quite different than its original namesake—it’s a combination bar, restaurant, bowling alley, and arcade, and it brought in more than 1,200 people for its grand opening.

What awaits inside is an experience unlike any other in Birmingham. Walking in from the unassuming front entrance, guests are welcomed into a cavernous room that reaches far beyond expectations both physically and figuratively.

Immediately on the right, a large dining area seats those eager to try dishes from an innovative Mediterranean menu (by the same chef/owner/operators of El Barrio and Paramount). Past the dining room, an expansive bar runs the length of the building, ending at a grouping of mod-inspired couches nestled at the base of eight duckpin bowling lanes. To the right of that is yet another bar and a wall lined with Pinball machines. There also are pool, ping pong, shuffleboard, and foosball tables, plus large TVs and a giant Pac-Man screen fitted into another corner. Sprinkled throughout are small groupings of comfy couches and chairs, ideal for unwinding with friends over drinks while waiting for a bowling lane to open. Oh, and did we mention there’s a rooftop bar?

For Mike Gibson, of Creature architecture and construction, transforming the building was all about creating levels so that the space matched The Woolworth’s multifaceted approach to entertainment. The design, he says, “allows for everything to happen at once,” but in its own space. So, despite the building’s heavy traffic, it’s still an inviting space for people to hang out in while they wait for games to become available—which often can be up to three hours for bowling on the weekends. Another focus of Gibson’s design was to commemorate the history of the space.

“Our passion is adaptive reuse, so the idea is always to figure out how you can reuse a building and be inspired by the history of the building,” he says. “The screens and patterns [on the walls] here are actually extrapolations from the Woolworth headquarter building in New York where the whole five-and-dime empire was.”

That theme of restoring old Birmingham was the major catalyst for developers John Boone and Hunter Renfroe of Orchestra Partners when they began looking at downtown buildings to purchase and transform. Boone, a native of Roebuck, says when he returned to Birmingham in 2016, it was an entirely different city from the one he left in 2010. Five Points South and Morris Avenue were the first two areas the partners set their sights on. The old Bailey Brothers building (now The Woolworth) was one of their first projects.

“Probably the smartest thing to do would have been to tear it down, but we didn’t want to do that,” he says. “We like the façade of 20th Street, and we wanted to keep it that way. We remembered when Five Points was the most walkable entertainment district in the city, and it was still very walkable, just not very entertaining. So, we said how do you make it entertaining?”

After visiting Pinewood Social during a bachelor party in Nashville, Boone and Renfroe had their concept. They wanted to create something similar in Birmingham, but they ran into trouble finding a contractor to take on the project. While the building was still under contract, they made an impulse decision that ended up making all the difference.

“We just said, ‘Screw it, we’ll do it ourselves and figure it out as we go along,’” Boone remembers of the company’s decision to produce The Woolworth 100 percent locally.

Soon, they paired up with Gibson, who was with Appleseed Workshop. The architecture firm was in the process of combining with Golden Construction to become Creature. The timing was perfect for the newly minted company to take on both the design and construction of The Woolworth.

From there, the missing piece of the puzzle was finding someone to run the operations side. Gibson, who previously designed El Barrio and Paramount, knew just the guy: owner/chef/operator Neville Baay. For Baay, the offer to join The Woolworth team realized a longtime dream he and his business partners had to expand Paramount to include duckpin bowling. Furthermore, as a chef and restaurateur, Baay would have a chance to expand his horizons and flex his culinary creativity at The Woolworth.

To create that fresh start in his new kitchen, Baay, along with Brian Sommershield, decided on a menu of Mediterranean dishes like Barcelona Bread, Moroccan Wings, Mezze Duo, Baked Rigatoni “Cacciatore,” and Fattoush Salad. The menu is far from average bar food, and slowly but surely visitors are starting to catch on to the idea of something more than cheese fries and burgers at a bowling alley. Baay says people often are pleasantly surprised by the food’s quality (it’s all made in-house from fresh, local ingredients).

“From a restaurateur standpoint, [Birmingham] is amazing because you have opportunities like this,” he says. “Nowhere in any big city can you go in the heart of downtown and see an old building and do something with it. I think Birmingham, although we have a slow start on the rest of the world, is doing some very serious catching up.”

And The Woolworth is a serious part of that catching up. Its presence has continued momentum in the renaissance sweeping Five Points, with new restaurants and businesses opening every day, including multiple new tenants in Pickwick Place like Momotaro Asian café and Stephen Gregory Men’s Salon.

“This isn’t going to make or break Five Points, but it’s emblematic of what’s happening all over town, and it’s a really awesome feeling to be a part of that,” Baay says.

Since The Woolworth started picking up steam in 2017 and the Five Points Alliance announced a reboot toward a “clean and safe” initiative, people have begun to take notice of the once-popular, but long-forgotten entertainment district. As Boone says of the partnerships that allowed The Woolworth to become a reality and the timing of bringing the concept to Five Points: “It was a perfect storm.”

As The Woolworth begins to make progress on its mission to prove, once again, what a vibrant community Five Points is, Boone says the group who brought it to Birmingham is on the edge of something big. After all, two-thirds of its creators were among the first to take a chance on downtown when they opened El Barrio on Second Avenue North in 2011. And again, when they opened Paramount two years later.

“We pushed through at a very formative time,” Gibson says. “El Barrio changed the city, in my opinion, because it had people coming from over the mountain. It changed the perception [of downtown] by creating a destination, and once people were here we had to come up with another place for them to go. It takes these moments where people make the next move that nobody else was going to make.”

“The next move” was most recently The Woolworth, but Orchestra Partners and Creature already are working on the next—and the next. Currently their other Five Points projects include the Studio Arts building, which soon will become a noodle restaurant; and the Base Camp building, which is set to become Five Points Lane shopping plaza. Already two restaurants and a grab-and-go coffee shop have signed leases. A bar made of shipping containers also is in the works.

From the beginning, the group behind The Woolworth was bullish on Birmingham, bullish on downtown, and bullish on Five Points South. And that mindset has been key. “We were so convinced that people wanted to be downtown, that there was no holding any of this group back,” Boone says.

Set behind checkered wallpaper, a wall inside The Woolworth reads: “100% Birmingham Quality.” If The Woolworth is any example of what happens when a project is dreamed up and produced entirely by local talent, then get ready Birmingham, because we’re in for a treat.